


Those Who Came Before

by gardnerhill



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:49:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Joan Watson thinks that Sherlock Holmes keeps a lot of junk – but it all means something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Came Before

Of all the things to catch my eye in that bare-bones apartment (five or six flatscreens hardly counts in this town), it's an accordion folder that draws my eye. A regular old 20-compartment-type folder for bills; most people use them. So of course I was surprised that he used one too (Sherlock Holmes, I'm quickly finding out, is definitely not _most_ people). 

"Some things can't be categorized via ones and zeroes, Watson," was his first airy dismissal of my query. That held for about one day – before everything started hitting the fan at once. I'd learned that keeping tabs on this ex-junkie was not going to be the dull job I'd signed up for. 

As his official babysitter (they can call me a defrocked surgeon or a sobriety partner all they like, I know what I really am) I have the right to inspect all his goods and papers. I didn't lose time doing so while he was taking a shower (what, is it Monday again already?).

Turns out it was the weirdest goddamn scrapbook collection you ever saw.

• A swatch of old crumbling film with BAFFLED written across it in silver Sharpie.  
• A flat cardboard pack of Gillette razors with a small Post-It stuck on, with the single word "Calabash?"  
• Some dried herbs – basil, I was relieved to find out by smell.  
• A bent willow branch.  
• A radio knob.  
• A pair of glasses wrapped in a kerchief covered in Cyrillic script.  
• A 45 LP of "Hey Jude" by the Beatles.  
• A pink SmartPhone. 

And every single file compartment had the same designation on it: **U2, U2, U2**. So he wasn't just recuperating from his addiction, he was obsessed with the band?

Or I was starting to be as nuts as he was. Because just reading those compartments full of this junk, all I heard was _You too. You two. You too. You two._

Me, too? Or us two - an English-born ex-junkie and a third-generation Chinese-American former doctor?

All I knew was that, looking at this stuff, for some reason I heard my old Lao Ye talking to me again: **rì guāng zhī xià wú xīn shì**.

_There is nothing new under the sun_.

**Author's Note:**

> * The key to the objects in the file, and what they mean:
> 
> • A swatch of old crumbling film with BAFFLED written across it in silver Sharpie. **("Sherlock Holmes Baffled" was the first filmed version of the detective, in 1900)**  
>  • A flat cardboard pack of Gillette razors with a small Post-It stuck on, with the single word "Calabash?" **(American actor William Gillette portrayed Sherlock Holmes on stage at the turn of the 20th century - and came up with the famous calabash pipe as a prop)**  
>  • Some dried herbs – basil, I was relieved to find out by smell. **(Basil Rathbone)**  
>  • A bent willow branch. **(Jeremy Brett - his biography is called "Bending the Willow")**  
>  • A radio knob. **(The BBC Radio production(s) - of which there have been more than one brilliant series)**  
>  • A pair of glasses wrapped in a kerchief covered in Cyrillic script. **(The Russian Sherlock Holmes series, made in the late 1970s - early 1980s)**  
>  • A 45 LP of "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. **(The Guy Ritchie films with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law)**  
>  • A pink SmartPhone. **(The BBC series "Sherlock")**


End file.
